Genetic Psychology Monographs, 1975, 92, 231-297.

A THEORETICAL A N D EMPIRICAL APPROACH TOTHE STUDY OF DEVELOPMENT*

University o f Wisconsin-Madison

M I C H A E L M . P I E C H O W S K I

Foreword by Dr. K . Dabrowski 2 3 3Acknowledgments 2 3 8Summary 2 3 9

I. In t roduc t ion 2 4 0II. T h e conceptual structure o f the theory o f positive disintegration 2 4 4

I I I . M e t h o d s and sources of data 2 6 7IV. Assessment o f levels 2 7 7V. Assessment o f developmental potential 2 8 4

VI. Conclusion 2 9 3References 2 9 5

* Received in the Editorial Office, Provincetown, Massachusetts, on October 25, 1974.Copyright, 1975, by The Journal Press.

FOREWORD

I am grateful to the Editor for giving me the opportunity to express mythoughts on the origins and subsequent formation of the theory of positivedisintegration from a perspective o f 40 years.

I t is perhaps true that new highly dynamic theories arise not only fromobservation and analysis but also from a highly charged experiential proc-ess leading to the bi r th and development o f new conceptions. Th is iscertainly true o f the theory o f positive disintegration.

As a rule I am reluctant to indulge in personal disclosures, but I feel Imust make an exception here. To a large extent the conceptions of thetheory grew ou t o f events experienced i n m y adolescence and youth.Already then I had a distinct need to see values in a hierarchical order. Inmy psychological makeup I had heightened emotional, imaginational, andintellectual excitability. The specific developmental dynamics was basedprimarily on these three forms o f psychic overexcitability, as they werecalled later, rather than on the psychomotor form which, nevertheless, wasalso present in my constitution. These overexcitabilities had the effect ofmaking concrete stimuli more complex, enhancing their emotional contentand amplifying every experience.

This was especially true in regard to the question of death, suffering, the.meaning of human existence, and the destiny of man. Experiences relatedto these perpetual questions went along two lines. The first was in regardto the suffering, death, and injustice inflicted upon persons very close tome; the second was in regard to the suffering, imprisonment and death ofgreat numbers of people. I remember a battle during the First World War.When the exchange of artillery fire ended, fighting went on with cold steel.When the battle was over, I saw several hundred young soldiers lyingdead, their lives cut in a cruel and senseless manner. I witnessed masses ofJewish people being herded toward ghettos. O n the way the weak, theinvalid, the sick were killed ruthlessly. And then, many times, I myself andmy close family and friends have been in the immediate danger of death.The juxtaposition of inhuman forces and inhuman humans with those whowere sensitive, capable of sacrifice, courageous, gave a vivid panorama ofa scale o f values from the lowest to the highest.

I learned about death very early in my life. Death appeared to me notjust as something threatening and incomprehensible, but also as somethingthat one must experience emotionally and cognitively a t a close range.When I was six my little three-year-old sister died of meningitis. When Iwas young I witnessed death again during the First World War, and as a

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mature man during the Second World War. These events brought a great-number of experiences which demanded an answer, but the answer had tobe complex and multidimensional in view of the forms of overexcitabilitymentioned earlier, since i t was due to them, to my enhanced imagination,activity o f thought, and emotional involvement that the content o f myobservations and experiences was greatly amplified. From the events o fthose times came an unappeased need to deepen the attitude toward thedeath o f others and toward my own, toward injustice and social cata-clysms, toward the discrimination between truth and falsehood in humanattitudes and behavior.

In face o f these questions I often fe l t broken and afflicted b y theirnumber and overwhelming complexity. I fe l t that these questions de-manded answers that would be universal and that would penetrate deep.This need to penetrate deep became more and more associated wi th anintuitive understanding of the multilevel nature of phenomena. Superficial-ity, vulgarity, absence o f inner conflict, qu ick forgetting o f grave ex-periences, became something repugnant to me. I searched for people andattitudes of a different kind, those that were authentically ideal, saturatedwith immutable values, those who represented "what ought to be" against"what is." And i t often turned out that among such persons the "whatought to be" was already there and at times in its noblest manifestations.

Experiencing the contradictions of values in everyday observations had itscounterpart in extensive study and examination of conceptions and theoriesoffered by Jackson, Janet, Freud, and others. I n the development of myattitude toward these ideas, the discriminating criterion was the presenceor absence of multilevel conceptions or at least some approximation to that.The presence of multilevel approaches in their theories made me receptivetoward Jackson, Sherrington, Jung, and Rorschach, while the absence ofmultilevel components made incomprehensible t o m e psychoanalytictheories, Pavlov's theory, behaviorism, or even some of Aldler's, ideas suchas the assumption that there is no inheritance o f psychological traits, o rthat there is only feeling o f inferiority toward others but none towardoneself.

I could not agree w i th the idea o f early childhood frustrations as anexplanation for the origin and development of psychoneuroses when every-day observation and m y clinical practice were demonstrating the l i nkbetween psychoneurotic and creative processes. I could not accept theone-sided and unilevel transposition of experimental results with animalscarried out by Pavlovians or behaviorists onto the complex, subtle and

M I C H A E L M . P IECHOWSKI 2 3 5

multilevel human mechanisms. I could not accept certain theories (Janet,Adler, and others) which associated human development w i th externalconditions only and did not take into account the developmental potentialof the inner psychic milieu.

In these searches I tried to base myself on broad comprehensive ex-periment and studies. O n the basis o f these studies and conceptions inwhich I perceived outlines of a hierarchy of values, I felt the need to createsuch a hierarchy o f values which would be described w i th precision,empirically developed, and objectively testable.

One more remark. The recognition Of the importance of multilevelnessrequired that one looked for its elements and manifestations in all areas ofhuman process and experimentation: tha t is, i n neurophysiology, psy-chiatry, psychology, sociology, a n d education. T h e complexity o f thephenomena of human life, as well as their multilevelness, could not beunderstood wi thout the investigation o f l inks, aggregations, a n d i n -teractions of factors operating in the external environment, as well as, andforemost, o f those operating in the inner psychic milieu.

Psychological and educational experiment enabled me to see the mul-tilevelness of phenomena also in the area of education. A sensitive, capa-ble, introverted child is often given negative evaluation because o f hisshyness and lack o f self-confidence. H o w often does one see how •psy-choneurotics are pushed out to the margin, whi le society yields to theinfluence of psychopaths—individuals who act without inhibition, withoutscruples, without emotional responsiveness: that is, individuals who aredeficient in the constituting element o f the inner psychic milieu.

The world of external and internal phenomena began to form itself in myexperience as a world of values arranged in a hierarchy of levels. Valuesappeared to represent different levels. The span between the levels o f agiven phenomenon became by far more significant than the content of theterm defining the phenomenon. Each level covered a distinctly differentrange o f a given phenomenon. Thus empathy appeared as somethingdifferent from primitive syntony, primitive immobilizing fear as somethingtotally different from and unrelated to existential fear, brutal and wi ldlaughter as something different from and unrelated to a subtle smile man-ifesting depth of inner experience in respect to others and to oneself. I t wasstriking that these disparate manifestations of behavior never coexisted inthe same individual. Existential fears, obsessions, and depressions turned outto be unrelated to egocentric fears, obsessions, and depressions. The first werethe result of excessive sensitivity, disappointments, sadness, and suffering;

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the second were most often the result of lack of success in life, thwartedambition, material losses—in short, of primitive egocentrism shaped by ex-ternal stimuli.

In numerous mental disorders, and especially in psychoneuroses, I foundagain and again great creative and developmental richness. Such patients,not reconciled to their concrete reality bu t rather opposed to i t , wereundergoing psychoneurotic processes generated by the multidimensionalityof their experiencing. They manifested trends and efforts in search o f areality of higher level. And often they were able to f ind i t unaided.

The label "degenere superieur," applied to such individuals, became forme the very representation of an artificial solution to the truth that manymental disorders do not manifest degeneration but, on the contrary, a highlevel of overall mental development. On the basis of detailed biographicalstudies I saw that geniuses of mankind and saints manifested psychoneu-rotic processes, even borderline o f psychosis, combined wi th the highestlevel of experience, as well as of understanding and attaining the highestlevels of reality.

In relation to social structures these experiences led me to distinguishthree groups composed of (a) primitive and brutal elements, acting towardtheir own advantage and often determining the course o f events, (b) so-called normal individuals subordinated to the primitive ones, and (c) ner-vous individuals and psychoneurotics characterized by enhanced psychicexcitability, mainly emotional, imaginational, and intellectual, who arepushed out to the margin and yet who create the highest and the mostlasting values. These three groups formed themselves in my mind in a"natural" manner, w i th the first having the greatest adevelopmental ad-vantage, showing the greatest aggressiveness but no scruples, the second ata developmental disadvantage, and the third----developmentally the richest—being forced out. The third group is the most vulnerable in terms ofindividual and social development.

These three types of groups can be observed with some variation almostanywhere i n social structures: i n the family, school, administration, in -dustry, higher education, international relations. Here again appeared theproblem of multilevelness of social groups and of multilevelness of social

• values. The distinction o f levels, their organization and development be-came for me the key to the answers I sought.

The definition of five levels of development of emotional and instinctivefunctions, their detailed description and elaboration o f methods o f theirdiagnosis, brought the concept of multilevelness to the realm of objective

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operations, similar to those employed in the study of human intelligence.This, in turn, allowed me gradually to elaborate philosophical ideas in regardto the problem of values. The distinction of levels of values is more meaningfuland more crucial than the distinction of kinds of values. This introduces intoaxidlogy in place of relativism of values their hierarchization.

In conclusion I would like to say that perhaps i t was a certain amount ofcognitive, as well as experiential, potential that enabled me to- reach to amultidimensional and multilevel reality and establish some o f its dimen-sions. T h e consequences o f such a n approach are rather obvious f o rphilosophy of education and for creating educational models, for diagnosisand therapy o f mental disorders, especially o f psychoneuroses, fo r com-prehensive multilevel and multidimensional psychology, and for philosophywhich i n m y approach represents a n objective protest against thehegemony of positivism.

Finally, I would like to express my profound appreciation and affectionfor my young friend Dr. M. M . Piechowski, for his original and creativeapproach to the theory of positive disintegration, for his numerous con-ceptions enriching the fundamental structure of the theory and also thosegoing beyond the present scope of problems encompassed by the theory.

Universite Laval, Quebec City K a z i m i e r z DabrowskiApril 1974